Yes — in Prefect 3.x you can detect this at runtime from the flow run’s

created_by

field. If a flow was started by a Prefect Cloud Automation,

created_by.type

will be

AUTOMATION

and you can read the automation’s name from

created_by.display_value

(and id from

created_by.id

). Here’s a minimal example:

from prefect import flow, get_run_context

@flow
def my_flow():
    ctx = get_run_context()
    fr = ctx.flow_run

    if fr.created_by and getattr(fr.created_by, "type", None) == "AUTOMATION":
        automation_id = fr.created_by.id
        automation_name = fr.created_by.display_value
        print(f"Triggered by automation: {automation_name} ({automation_id})")
    else:
        print("Not triggered by an automation")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    my_flow()

Notes: - This is available during orchestrated runs (Prefect Cloud/Server). Local, ad-hoc

my_flow()

runs won’t have automation metadata. - You can access the same info from tasks via

get_run_context().flow_run.created_by

. - If you need this in child processes or external systems, pass

automation_name

as a parameter to tasks/subflows after you read it from the flow context.